About AfterTaxSalary
AfterTaxSalary is a free calculator that turns a salary into an estimate of take-home pay for the 2026 tax year, broken out by federal tax, FICA, and state income tax.
Why this site exists
The site began with a familiar frustration: comparing two job offers, one in Illinois and one in Tennessee, both quoted the same salary and would leave the bank account several thousand dollars apart. Every tool found online either buried the answer under ads, demanded an email address, or showed a single number with no breakdown. This site is the answer to that frustration — a calculator that shows its work, names its data sources, and asks for nothing in return.
What this site is for
The site exists to answer one practical question: once taxes come out, what actually lands in my account? People use it when comparing a new job offer, deciding whether a raise is worth it, or weighing a move between states with very different tax burdens. Every calculation runs in your browser; nothing you type is uploaded or stored.
Who builds and checks it
AfterTaxSalary is maintained by a small editorial team of writers and data enthusiasts who focus on pay transparency. The team is deliberately not a single named expert, because the work here is verification rather than opinion: every figure on the site traces to an official government publication, and the pages say which one. Each tax figure passes through a three-step check before it ships — copied from the official bulletin (IRS Revenue Procedure, SSA announcement, or state revenue department table), recomputed independently through this site’s own engine, and reviewed line by line against the source. When you see a number on this site, three separate passes stand behind it.
Where the numbers come from
Federal brackets and the standard deduction follow the IRS 2026 inflation adjustments. The Social Security wage base uses the SSA 2026 figure. State rates come from each state’s published 2026 tax tables. All of these are fixed in a single data file so the math is identical for every visitor and easy to verify. The Methodology page documents the formulas and links the official sources.
An honest limitation
This is an estimator, not tax advice. It models regular income, FICA, and state income tax. It does not handle itemized deductions, pre-tax retirement or health contributions, capital gains, or self-employment tax. Your employer’s actual withholding can differ from a yearly estimate. We say this plainly because a trustworthy calculator should be clear about what it does and does not do.
How often it is updated
Tax parameters are refreshed at the start of each tax year, when federal brackets, the standard deduction, and the Social Security wage base are announced. The calculator displays the tax year it is using so you can confirm the figures are current. If you believe a rate is wrong or out of date, please let us know and we will correct it — reader reports have fixed real mistakes on this site before, and the correction log in each page’s footer date reflects them.